ABSTRACT
It has been written of the Great War that sensibility is the umbilicus of our understanding. The obscure Marlborough schoolmaster, John Bain, made an inimitable contribution to this understanding with his evocations of boyhood brought to appalling destruction. He was the unique elegist of boys he had loved in the beauty of their youth; a singular chronicler of their lost boyhood and a moving memorialist of his lost boys.
